Amy Stevens

I imagined the Chatsubo in 1984. 41 years later I opened its door. Neuromancer is in production.

Asexual flag made from photos of galaxies

Non-binary flag made from photos of galaxies

New Pride flag made from photos of galaxies

Transgender flag made from photos of galaxies

Happy Pride month, all! Way back in 2018 I made these galaxy pride flags. They were shared many thousands of times, featured on Vice, and even made their way onto book covers and into video games.

Here are the original ones I created (in no particular order!) so Bluesky can have them too. 💙

Finally updated my website after letting it die when I killed my adobe subscription.

Kind of regret deciding to do it myself on neocities. The whole make my own site idea seemed great when I was unemployed, less so these days, but, hey, it's done. I exist on the world wide web once more.

"is this a pigeon?" meme, except it's a writer looking at a perfectly normal first draft and asking "Is this the worst thing ever written?"

Remember, a first draft's only job is to exist

interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume?

me, a writer: yes. in the trade we call that a line break

I wish I could do text formatting on here. Maybe I should go back to tumblr lol

What if you arrived home and found a stranger had commandeered your house?

This is Not Your House is a super neat little VN. Great concept, wacky branches.

Third person prose with second person choices is jarring but beyond that this is fun and scary.

store.steampowered.com/app/3139140/...

Rolled credits on Blue Prince last night! An absolute bonkers set of runs saved at the last minute by a dining room I forgot about. Not sure if I'm happy to leave it here, or if I want to go after the rest of the puzzles...

this is maybe trite at this point but it is in your interest to find ways to create things. basically everyone wants you to be consuming nonstop. making stuff, from cooking to photography or whatever, can help you feel more in control. doesn’t even have to be something you share with other people

Some ND folks I've spoken to about it were not keen.

Yeah, really tough to archive! Looks like it has been done unofficially, but looks difficult to run and obviously at risk from copyright strikes. It's sad how ephemeral media is these days.

I know a lot of games folk pan it, but I loved Bandersnatch and am really sad to see it go. Wish I could buy it on DVD or something.

A screenshot from Tumblr user omnybus, saying, I think what I love most about mythology is that the "Trickster God/Spirit" is an archetypical character found in almost every body of folklore. It's like "Oh, here's our God of the Sun, our God of the Sea, our God of Fertility, and our God of Being A Wretched Little Gremlin Who Causes Problems On Purpose".

This is everything to me

I kinda went silent on here after I asked a "how do you deal with this narrative design thing" question and got a whole load of "well I'm simply good at my job so this isn't a problem" replies.

Gonna try and be less sensitive and post again 😅

I'm looking for beta testers for my latest twine game!

A boyfriend was all you ever wanted, or thought you wanted, at least. But when your love spell goes wrong, you find yourself face-to-face with soulless husks, perfect parasites and jellyfish that grow teeth.

Shoot me a dm if interested ❤️

A variation of a recently popular meme image. The top row says "Born to:" followed by a picture of the drafting choices from Blue Prince. The bottom row says "Forced to:" followed by pictures of a woman biting her laptop in anger, the Excel icon, a person holding a hilariously oversized cup of coffee, and a screenshot of the iPhone clock app showing five alarms set from 6am through 9am.

A full aurora ring over a bay in Iceland

#bluesky #photography #nature #art #landscape #light #travel

You've been begging for it, and here it is! Announcing an exciting new product from Yarn Spinner Co:

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Access everything about everything that players have done in the most important game of all time, straight from Yarn.

yarnspinner.dev/mesaves

"Should" would make me so nervous to use the key, I love it. What does the character know about what's behind that door that I don't? Excellent typo.

Yes, I love these sorts of characters! Was saying in another comment that their function in the narrative and in the gameplay are the same thing and that is delicious.

Thank you! 1 is a great suggestion for variance in lines, as well. The same general intent can be written quite differently when you think about the emotional place the character is in.

Interesting! It's an hour and a half long and I've not played Spiderman so not sure if I'll get to it, but thank you for the link.

Love this. If we only hear the character's voice in moments of direction it becomes incredibly obvious the line is directed towards the player!

We need art right now, more than ever! Art counters misinformation, builds empathy, and can strike at the heart of apathy. Art is a threat to fascism.
It always has been.

Losing creative voices in games, TV, publishing - that’s going to leave a cultural void.

That's the big kicker, right? No one talks to themselves as much as game characters do!

That's why I love the theater mode of "who is the audience and why am I talking to them", but that can be a little too 4th wall breaking for some types of games.

"I'm used to someone being there" works nicely.

100%! A lot of the issue with this type of talk is that it sounds generic or like something that character would never say.

A handler type character is fab for this. Their function on a player and character level are the same! 😍😍

Mmm, true. I must admit I have a soft spot for the old school style "press the interact button" type stuff, but that's very much not en vogue atm.

Reading out loud is so incredibly useful! Having someone else read out loud is even better.

Very good point. We've got more than just dialogue to work with here.

*all game scenarios. Sounds like I just said my go to technique doesn't work 🙃

One of my go-tos is making sure dialogue is directed towards someone, even if no-one is there; something I picked up from writing soliloquies for theater. Who is the audience? Why is this speech directed towards them?

Doesn't work in game scenarios, though, so I'd love to here what others do!

Game writers / ND's, do you have any techniques for avoiding "gamey" sounding dialogue? The sort of thing where self-talk, objectives etc. sound out-of-character and too clearly directed towards the player.